Quote:
Originally Posted by
Concordia 
Their website says to bracket them on each side of the screen and face them in 30 degrees toward the listener. Presumably this is for the dispersion patterns but also to put a little space between it and the wall. The reviews I read do point out the lack of bass-- luckily, MMG also sells small sub-woofers.
Must look at other options. I've always liked the unboxed sound of Gallos, and they now have a double-ball thing that can be used for any of the 5 channels. More expensive, sadly.
Most speakers will do well with a bit of toe-in. How much depends on the speaker and your room. Dipoles need a bit of room behind them to work their best, which is a consideration if you're going that way. BTW, the Gallos are boxed speakers, just with a box for each driver, but they will still have the same box speaker limitations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
LabelKing I understand that these use similar technology to electrostatics, which also have a reputation for paucity of bass.
Unfortunately, it's just the physics of the situation. Planar dipoles like the Maggies have two things working against them in the bass: 1. In the bass, for every octave you go down, driver volume displacement (the distance the driver moves in and out multiplied by its area, or the total air volume the driver has to move) has to increase by 4 times. For example, to maintain the same sound pressure level at 20 Hz as at 40 Hz requires the bass driver to move back and forth 4 times as far. If a woofer is moving 1 inch at 40 Hz, it has to move 4 inches at 20 Hz to maintain the same SPL. Planar designs like Maggies may have relatively large moving areas due to their large planar surfaces, but those surfaces can only move miniscule distances, which limits their bass response. 2. Dipole speakers below a certain frequency (which depends on the width of the speaker) will start to half its bass response for every octave because the out-of-phase rear wave will start to come around the speaker and cancel out the front wave. That is, uncorrected by EQ, a dipole speaker's bass response at 20 Hz will be further reduced by half of what it was at 40 Hz. This is why many planar speakers are very wide: to make the point at which this bass short circuiting occurs be as low as possible. Because the audiophile market has never been very friendly towards active speakers (where there is an amplifier per driver, and the crossover is implemented in active electronics placed before the amp), and likes passive speakers (crossover built into the speaker, and the amp drives the speaker through the crossover), this bass short circuiting is very hard to fix for most speakers out there. Couple that with the low displacement of planar drivers, and it's basically unfixable for those kinds of speakers. However many people put up with all of this because of the magic of dipole bass, which is about the best bass you can hear outside of really good room EQ due to a lucky combination of human hearing behavior and a reduced interaction with the room. Or they go to a sensibly-engineered solution, which is to implement a dipole speaker using cone drivers instead, like the Linkwitz Orion (which I use) and Gradient speakers. If you do want to go the planar route, get yourself a pair of Quad ESL-63s. Nothing in the planar world has come close to achieving the balance of strengths and qualities that Peter Walker achieved over 40 years ago. Add a nice sub, and you've got a fantastic speaker that will credibly take on most modern speakers. --Andre
You will, of course, need the $2,100 accompanying tube headphone amplifier: http://www.elusivedisc.com/prodinfo....ber=STXSRM007T 
They're for a pair, which is quite reasonable for high-end new speakers. A vintage matched pair of Rogers LS35 monitors in fine condition are almost $2,000 now. 
